Root Jumper

by Justine Felix Rutherford

  The Taffy Lady

  In the evening after the work was done, we all went about our own thing. This particular evening we begged our brother Eb to make us some taffy. This was not hard to do since Eb always liked to cook. We always had sorghum molasses. We made it from the cane on the farm. It was mostly the only sugar we had.

  Eb put the sorghum on to cook, and it didn’t take long for the brown syrup to boil. The delicious smell of the golden brew filled the kitchen. After it had cooked to the right consistency, Eb took it from the stove and added soda. After it had cooled so that he could handle it, he added flour and began to move it around. He pulled it up several times and began to form a rope. He pulled it up and handed the end to me. We quickly pulled it back and forth, back and forth, and over and over. My brother Arnold wanted his turn. Back and forth they went.

  I asked if I might have some of the mixture to make something different. They usually just pulled it out, cut it in short pieces, and then put it on a plate to harden. He saved me a portion, and I put it in a bowl until I could decide what I wanted to do with it. I had always wanted a ginger bread boy. I had seen them, but I had never had one. I decided I would make a taffy lady. I poured the mixture out on the oil cloth table cover after having put some flour underneath it. I began to plan my lady. I wanted her to have arms and legs. After I had made her head and body, I started to make her arms. She was sticky, and so I had to put lots of flour on her. But I finally patted out her arms and legs. By this time everyone had gotten interested. I thought, “What can I use for hair?” I wanted to use cotton, but Werner suggested I use cocoa with a drop of water. We made brown hair, and I used raisins for eyes and a clear blue pebble for a nose. Also, a cut-out mouth from a magazine pressed on the taffy looked good. When I blew the flour off of her, I thought she was lovely.

  I checked on my lady before I went to bed. She seemed a little large, but she looked fine. I went off to bed. The next morning I awakened early and hurried into the kitchen to see my lady. Low and behold, through the night she had melted from the heat and moisture! One arm had partially melted and run around the sugar bowl. Her legs were hanging over the table in pieces. Her head had melted into a puddle. I started to cry. Mom had gotten up by this time, and I said,” Mom, look at my lady.” She patted me on the head and said, “Well, let’s get this mess cleaned up so we can have breakfast.”

  Old “Eddered” Sayings

  “Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.”

  Sam Walters Foss

  It’s a strange thing about old tales, superstitions, and sayings we had here in the hills. As a child I had trouble sleeping because there were so many snake stories. There was always a snake staring at me from the dark with green eyes. There was Satan in the garden in a snakeskin. We were told that the black snakes sucked the eggs from the chicken house and also sucked the cows. There was always the blue viper that charmed you so that you couldn’t move. The copperhead always smelled like cucumbers. I was always sniffing the air for copperheads. There was also the blowing viper which could outrace the sun. Besides the snake stories, there was the lore of the fields and woods. For example, we were told that weasels killed to suck the blood of their prey and that a red squirrel would eat the privates from a grey squirrel.

  We also received a long list of warnings—the “do not” list. Do not play with toads because they will wet on you, causing you to have warts. I had two warts on my finger. Someone was always saying, “You’ve been playing with toads.” This would make me furious. Someone told me I could sell the warts for a nickel. We were warned to never kill a ladybug or our house would burn down or to never kill a news bee or we would get bad news. We were to never sleep in the light of the full moon or we would go mad. We shouldn’t drop a dish cloth unless we wanted company. If a dog barked in the night, someone would die. There was always the mad dog scare in the summer. We were also warned about turtles. If one bit you, he wouldn’t let loose until the sun went down.

  Of course, we had our cures for everything. There was stump water for flea bites and sores. If a cow wouldn’t give her milk down, you should sprinkle salt and pepper on her tail. If you made a tea out of sheep stool, it would break out the measles. For foot pain, put a bar of soap in your bed close to your feet . Wear a bag of asafetida around your neck to ward off measles, whooping cough, and other diseases (if the odor didn’t kill you first). Peppermint candy and water would give you strength. Two or three drops of turpentine in sugar would kill abdominal worms. These are just a few; there were many more.

  My dear neighbor Rilda Martin lived out the lane from me. She used to tell me a tale and then she would say, “That’s an old ‘eddered’ saying. I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

  Following are a few of our old “eddered” sayings:

  He ain’t got sense enough to pour sand in a rat hole.

  He’s as dumb as a box of rocks.

  That’s as handy as a pocket in a shirt.

  You’re as slow as the seven-year itch, seven years behind “scratchin.”

  Stingy? Why, that fellow’s so tight he’d skin a flea for the tallow.

  He’s as useless as teats on a boar hog.

  There never was a lane that didn’t have a turn in.

  He’s so tight he squeaks when he walks.

  Money? Why he’s got money enough to burn a wet mule.

  The only way you could become a bigger liar is you’d have to put on weight.

  Don’t bawl over spilt milk—just find yourself another cow to milk.

  While I was writing about these old saying, I thought of an instance of a rare friendship between a boy and two older people. Rilda and Tom Martin lived out the lane from where I live today on Union Ridge. This was many years ago. Rilda wore her hair in a bun on top of her head, and she smoked a corn cob pipe. She stored her matches in her hair “where they were handy.” She smoked home-made tobacco in her pipe. As long as I knew her, Rilda didn’t change or seem to age. She didn’t believe in “puttin on airs.” She told you like it was! Years ago, we had a bus that ran out here. The bus company didn’t make much money because people were beginning to buy cars. Sometimes the bus needed repairs. One day Rilda was on the bus, and it was raining. The bus began to leak, and so Rilda put up her umbrella. The driver said, “Mrs. Martin, would you please lower your umbrella.” Rilda was heard to say, “I will not! Fix your old bus.”

  One day after I had had surgery, there was a knock on the door. I had just taken a pain pill and was lying down. I yelled, “Come on in.” It was Rilda. After we had visited a bit, she got out her corn cob pipe and lit up. Between the home- made tobacco and the pain pill, I became groggy. I could hardly stay awake. She said to me, “If you’re just going to lay here and sleep, I’m a goin home.”

  Neither Tom nor Rilda could read or write. Somehow our son Gordon began to visit them. Tom always worked, but through the day Rilda was home. After school, Gordon would yell at me, “I’m going over to Rilda’s.” Our sons Kenneth and Gordon always roamed around doing what they wanted to do unless I had something special for them to do. One day out of curiosity I said, ”What do you and Rilda talk about?” He said, “She tells me stories, and I read her mail to her.” He told me that Tom could hardly cut his wood anymore, so he was cutting his wood and filling up their wood box. He said that Rilda saved him things. One day he brought home a corn cob pipe.

  Rilda and Tom had a son they called “Lil Tommy.” Lil Tommy had tuberculosis (TB for short), and he died. My father-in-law Chet said, “If you don’t quit letting that boy go over there, he’s going to get TB.” I thought about it. Somehow I could never take this boy away from them. I can still hear Rilda yell at me across the holler, “Tell Gordon to come over today. I got mail.” When I was a kid, the teacher never allowed us to say “holler,” but I can say “holler” today. Anything that Rilda got that she thought Go
rdon would like, she would save for him. One day he brought home a BB gun someone had given her. Later, Rilda and Tom moved away to live with their daughter. Years later, someone brought Rilda and Tom out to see Chet. Although Gordon was in the service at the time, he was home on leave. When Tom saw Gordon, he hugged him and just cried like a baby.

  Many years later, Gordon preached their daughters funeral by request.

  The Arrival of the 17 Year Locust

  For a couple of years we had noticed that the moles were so bad in our yard. I dug down in the dirt and found a cicada grub. After talking to my neighbors, I knew that the cicadas would soon be here on the ridge. We called them “locusts” instead of cicadas, and they arrived in full force here on Union Ridge in 2007. They were driving people crazy with their shrieking sound.

  One early morning, I opened the door, threw open the windows, and laughing, I called to Curt, “Come hear the music.” He said, “How can you stand those things?” I replied, “They make me happy. It brings back memories of when I was a kid on the farm. They make me feel young again. Who knows? I may never hear them again.”

  The cicada brought back memories of the farm. The locust lay everywhere—on the grass, on tree trunks, and on the weeds. When you walked, you crushed them underfoot. The chickens and turkeys grew fat from the locusts. We kids used to gather the hulls from the locusts, crush them, and sneak them into each other’s beds. We would be up at midnight shaking out our sheets.

  Here on the ridge, there were piles of cicadas under the trees. We shoveled them up in a wheelbarrow and dumped them over the hill. The animals all became fat from eating the locusts. I watched a big fat squirrel grab one, take it up into a tree, and eat it. He was soon down for another one. All the birds had a feast also.

  One day I was sitting in my kitchen in front of the door when I saw a chipmunk scamper to the top of the step with a locust in his mouth. He was all set for his lunch, but then he saw me, dropped his locust, and scampered from the step. He was gone only an instant when he came back with another one in his mouth. He proceeded to eat it, but then he saw me and lost his locust. It fell down onto the next step. By this time he had a fascinated audience. He slipped around the step to get to his lunch. But he saw me and scampered back down the step. He tried slipping up the back of the step. There I was. He ran back down. He made one last attempt to get to his locust. He came in from the other side of the step. But there I was. He eyed me with his beady little eyes as he ran back down.

  I finally left to go to the post office. When I came home, I looked to see if the chipmunk had obtained his lunch while I was gone. The locust was still lying there. Laughing to myself, I took a broom and swept the locust from the step.

  Snakes

  Here in the hills and mountains, we had three venomous snakes that were feared. The water moccasin lived around the water. The other two were the copperhead and the rattle snake. If he heard you, the rattle snake would usually slither away. But if you came upon it quickly and startled it, it would rattle and strike. The copperhead was different. It was a lazy snake, and it would strike anytime rather than move.

  My cousin Lillie Jackson told me that many years ago she was playing with my aunt Sophia Spurlock Gill. She said that they decided to go pick some greens down by the creek. They grabbed their baskets, and Aunt Sophia said, “I can beat you all to the watercress patch.” This was a familiar spot down by the creek where the watercress grew. Away they went. Getting to an old rail fence first, over she went right onto or near enough to a copperhead that let her have it on the left side of her leg. Two tiny drops of blood ran down her leg. She said that they yelled for her brother to come. He ran to them, killed the snake, and got her to the house. Lillie said that Sophia soon looked awful. She was swollen all over. Her fingers looked like they were blown up, her eyes were about swollen shut, and there were big, baggy blue pockets under each eye. Lillie said Aunt Emily, my grandmother, kept a raw onion poultice on the leg and gave her lots of whiskey. Finally the doctor got there that night. Cousin Lillie said that she didn’t really know what he did for her because about all he had a reputation for was his good peach brandy. Doc boarded with them for a couple of weeks. Maybe some of his peach brandy may have helped, but for some time Aunt Sophia lay there. Her leg was black. Nowadays we would say it was gangrene. Aunt Sophia did get well, married, and later lived about a mile from where her snake bite happened.

  As children, we learned about St .Patrick driving all the snakes out of Ireland. Maybe our ancestors brought some with them when they came to America. I imagine there were plenty of snakes here before they came. When Curt and I went to Ireland, someone asked the guide if the snakes were all gone from Ireland. He answered that there were still snakes there, but most of them were in government.

  Ireland

  “Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping

  Than you can understand.”

  William Butler Yates

  Curt had long wanted to go to Ireland since he is Irish. He was interested in his ancestors. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I was Irish or not. My grandmother had always called herself Scots-Irish, but I thought probably she was just speculating. I knew a lot of people around Union Ridge were Scots-Irish.

  We have so many traits of the Irish—the story telling, the superstitions, religion, the love of guns, and the love of music and dancing. We are just independent people who do what we want to do. I wanted to know for sure where all our traits came from. I found out that a lot of them come from the Irish. So we decided to go to Ireland.

  We went with the Go-Ahead-Tours, and we were in Ireland from May 1st until May 17, 2011. As we began our descent into Ireland, we saw brilliant green and some yellow fields that we later found out were called rape, a seed that makes canola oil. We arrived in Dublin, Ireland, with sunshine and cold temperatures. Our Go-Ahead-Tours director was Tom (Thomas Patrick Michael Quinn). He welcomed us with a big smile and deposited us with fellow tourists. Tom walked us for quite a distance to our waiting bus. He introduced us to our bus driver, Lesley, who would take us to our hotel. There were twenty-eight tourists from all over the United States on the bus. We became like family because we had the same bus, the same tour guide, and the same bus driver. Our guide and our bus driver were terrific. We stayed in Jurys Inn, Parnell Street, 3 Diamond Hotel, just a half block off O’Connell Street, the city’s main north-south route. Most of the buildings on this famous street were burned or destroyed during the 1916 Easter rising and the Irish Civil War in 1960.

  We photographed the “Dublin Spire,” a stainless steel conical spire that tapers from a ten-foot diameter base to a four-inch pointed tip of optical glass at a height of three hundred and ninety-four feet. As the city’s tallest structure and lit at night, it provided us with a beacon to find our way home from anywhere in the city.

  Also in the center of O’Connell Street on the north end was the massive obelisk- shaped monument to Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) who was the leader of the Home Rule Party and known as the uncrowned “King of Ireland.” We became quite grateful to Parnell for always pointing his bronze right arm toward our hotel, especially some of our group who visited the many pubs. At the south end of O’Connell Street was a huge monument to Daniel O’Connell who was known as the “liberator.” O’Connell organized peaceful rallies of up to a million people in pursuit of Catholic emancipation from Great Britain. In 1828, after a five-year campaign, O’Connell’s Emancipation Act was passed giving a limited number of Catholics the right to vote. The big monument to the liberator took nineteen years to complete after the foundation stone was placed in 1864.

  We found the General Post Office (GPO), built in 1818, on O’Connell Street. This beautiful building became the symbol of the 1916 Easter Rising. Easter Rising members of the Irish Vo
lunteer and Irish Citizen’s Army seized the building on Easter Monday, and Patrick Pearce, a poet, read the Proclamation of the Republic from the steps of the GPO. The fourteen leaders and over twenty-five thousand armed insurgents held the GPO and other Dublin public buildings for five days before being captured, court martialed, and shot at Kelmainham Gaol. The 1916 rising inspired new support for the Republican cause. In 1919 an unofficial Irish Parliament was established, and the War of Independence began against the occupying British forces. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 divided Ireland in two, granting independence to the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) while Northern Ireland remained in the United Kingdom.

  We found the money changing office next to the GPO and watched as our U. S. dollars were exchanged for Euros. The exchange rate was definitely not in our favor. We got on the bus for a tour of Dublin. Dublin was founded by the Vikings in 841 and named “Dubhlinn.” This means “black pool” and the town was so named because it was on the confluence of two rivers. The area where our hotel was located was called the “North Liffey.” The river Liffey flows east to west across Dublin and is also known as the “Sniffey Liffey,” because of the odor.

  We learned that the Guiness family was revered in Ireland, starting with Arthur Guiness who developed a stout porter beer in the old St. James Gate building in 1759. The Guiness beer symbol, the Irish harp, was given to Ireland by the Guinesses’ to use as its national symbol. However, the harp had to be shown inverted with the round portion on the left. Only the Guiness family can display the harp with the round side on the right. The Guiness family continues to support Ireland with funding for buildings, education, etc. We also saw the statue of Molly Malone, known as the “tart with a cart” by the locals and the reclining nude statue in a pond dubbed “Floozie in the Jacuzzi.” Most of the Irish people we met had a delightful sense of humor.